The path ahead in the New Year is paved with hope and caution, opportunities and hazards. Forbes India navigates the maze and finds answers to 10 crucial posers
Oil prices have climbed recently to $65 a barrel and traders continue to place bullish bets
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1. Will the government abandon fiscal prudence?
The last year of an election cycle is typically fraught with fiscal uncertainty. Despite its stellar performance so far on the fiscal front no one expects the present government to follow a different path. The 2018 budget will, in all likelihood, see the government loosen its purse strings as it seeks to satisfy multiple constituencies—from farmers hit by low minimum support prices to small traders reeling under the implementation of the goods and services tax (GST).
The government’s work on the fiscal front has been exemplary so far. It inherited a deficit of 4.5 percent and has worked overtime to contain it to a budgeted 3.2 percent in 2017-18. At the same time, it has increased capex expenditure while broadly maintaining spends on the social schemes it inherited from the UPA era (the National Rural Health Mission is a notable exception).
(This story appears in the 19 January, 2018 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)